Rasmussen: Young adults prefer capitalism to socialism by … four points

posted at 6:12 pm on April 9, 2009 by Allahpundit

I’m inclined to say this should be re-polled after they get the bill for Great Society II, but if memory serves, America’s reaction to the New Deal wasn’t exactly a Reaganesque golden age.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better…

It is interesting to compare the new results to an earlier survey in which 70% of Americans prefer a free-market economy. The fact that a “free-market economy” attracts substantially more support than “capitalism” may suggest some skepticism about whether capitalism in the United States today relies on free markets.

Of note: The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” weren’t defined in the poll, leaving us to wonder what twentysomethings have in mind when they think of the latter. I think Matt Yglesias is right that because of their age they’re less inclined to associate it with Soviet-style repression than with third-way Hopenchange, which poses a dilemma for Obama’s critics on the right. Do we continue to slap the scarlet “S” on him and risk having his popularity with kids make them more comfortable with the concept of socialism by association? Or do we dial down the rhetoric, call off the alarm, and risk people becoming more comfortable with The One’s statism-by-inches because, after all, it’s not capital-S “socialism”? My guess: Doesn’t much matter. If the economy turns around, the stimulus will get credit and there’ll be Strange New Respect for command economies. If it doesn’t, Ayn Rand gets a whole new generation of fans. It’s out of our hands.

Blowback

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Comments

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class.

The class had insisted that socialism worked & that no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, “Ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.”

All grades would be averaged & everyone would receive the same grade. So no one would fail & no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged & everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset
and the students who studied a little were happy.

But as the second test rolled around, the students who studied a little had studied even less & the ones who studied hard decided that since they could not make an A, they studied less. The second test average was a D. No One was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around the average grade was an F.

The scores never increased as the bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings & no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder people try to succeed the greater their reward, but when a government takes all the reward away no one will try or succeed.

Maybe you should have taken somenting more than women’s studies, polisci, or black studies. Obviously you want to start at the top. Have you taken a hard course (hard for a normal person, not you) in your life? Did you even go to college or university (there is a difference). Did you take the math like engineers and scientists? I sold hand sewn geegaws door to door to help my mother put food on the table. I worked in a foundry. I paid my own way through university. My first job after graduation paid $222.13/mo ($2665/yr). If I was a private, I would have made all of $39/month ($468/mo)before taxes. I had to buy my own food, work 24 hours/day, and kill people when I was told to. I have since worked my up to engineer/scientist and retired.

Maybe in highschool, you should have stayed home and studied hard subjects instead of going to the prom/hop/football game.

I have news for you darkstar, I wouldn’t hire you either. Come out of mama’s basement and give her a rest. Get a job until you learn something. Then get a better job. You can’t afford housing? We used to start with a 3 or 4 room (not bedroom) house, get equity and buy a bigger house. Nobody ever paid one cent on my mortgage during my lifetime. You don’t start out with a house like mommy or daddy!

This is where conservatives have lost, the classroom. Most people prefer socialism, they do not know what socialism is, they do not know what free enterprise and capitalism are. They just don’t. They are woefully uneducated in liberty and taught the assumptions os socialism but have no idea what that is either. So the pricewe pay are generations of ignorant voters that simply pull the lever for Democrats. Conservatives abandoned local goverment, defeated and dejected in the sixties these democrat voter factories have turned out reliable democrat statist voters. The conservative movement has to realize that the inner city gets to vote too, and unless we roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty we are going to get yet another generation of ignorant people that will reliably vote democrat.

It’s awful hard to believe in the capitalist system when it’s crashing down like a house of cards at the same time you’re trying to find work.

Dark-Star on April 9, 2009 at 6:21 PM

Yeah, we should go socialist so we can be like all those other countries that are in even worse shape than us, where a 10% unemployment rate is considered a good year, and indoor plumbing is a luxury.

Pull your head out of your ass, stop listening to our Communist-in-chief, put the bong away, get a haircut, and start showing up for work on time, and I guarantee you’ll get promoted to drive-through window cashier in no time.

People in my age group (20-30) are just getting out of college and have college loans up to the ears. Of course they want socalism because they want free college tuition and of course it is only going to get worse. We are raising out kids to be brats, everything handed to them, wanting to take the easy way out, uneducated individuals. This does not suprirse me in the least.

YOu know what? I agree. But it isn’t the dumbest generation b/c they were born that way. They are the dumbest generation b/c their parents made them that way. Those parents are BOOMERS. They are the dumbest generation to strike this nation and they are the generation that is going to be the undoing of this nation. I hate them collectively w/the white hot passion of a thousand suns! Individual boomers that I associate w/are fabulous. As a generation, I despise and spit on them. They suck!

YOu know what? I agree. But it isn’t the dumbest generation b/c they were born that way. They are the dumbest generation b/c their parents made them that way. Those parents are BOOMERS. They are the dumbest generation to strike this nation and they are the generation that is going to be the undoing of this nation. I hate them collectively w/the white hot passion of a thousand suns! Individual boomers that I associate w/are fabulous. As a generation, I despise and spit on them. They suck!

JAM on April 9, 2009 at 9:35 PM

So true. It really will only get worse. Can you imagine them raising kids.

When most Americans say “capitalism,” they mean “mixed economy.” And when most Americans say “socialism,” they mean… “mixed economy.” It’s just a matter of how much freedom and how much safety net is backed in. Few people support true free market virtue-of-selfishness capitalism (I do!), and few people support the abolishment of private property. This is a fairly meaningless survey.

When most Americans say “capitalism,” they mean “mixed economy.” And when most Americans say “socialism,” they mean… “mixed economy.”
Mark Jaquith on April 10, 2009 at 12:12 AM

Collectivism and free enterprise aren’t absolutes; they are directions.

When Republicans try to argue, “OUR Socialized medicine program is better than THEIR Socialized medicine program,” the battle is already lost. We can’t let them frame the question in terms of how quickly we should grow the government; conservatism can only succeed if we say screw that, and only discuss how quickly we should dismantle socialist programs.

Incremental Socialism is slow poison. Is it really any wonder so many Americans (even some real Americans) finally gave up and welcomed Obama’s knife to the heart?

We are living in a country where teachers, WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE TEACHING THE CONSTITUTION, actually believe that George Washington wrote the Constitution and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Bill of Rights.
Does anyone, other than myself, remember Ron Paul in the GOP Presidential Debates in 2008, stating;
“The U.S. has never been attacked in its 218 years of existance.”
Can Ron Paul even do simple math?
This idiot is a sitting U.S. Representative that doesn’t know that the British burned Buffalo N.Y., invaded Louisiana, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Ohio, and even burned the WHITE HOUSE in the war of 1812, that Mexico invaded Texas causing the Mexican-American War in 1845, and that Japanese troops invaded Alaska and fired on California during WW2? (maybe this idiot would like to see the Japanese Artillery shells that are STILL in the ground in California from WW2).
Stupid, ignorant leftist TEACHERS actually believe that NAZIs weren’t and aren’t Socialists, these pathetic, uneducated fruitcakes aren’t as smart as 5th graders if they don’t know Nazi is an ACRONYM, Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiter-Partei translated as National SOCIALIST German Worker’s Party.

Folks, THAT is what we are up against, ignorance, stupidity, and a leftist agenda placed in our schools.

SOCIALISM;1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. 2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

Freaking brilliant. This should be required curriculum at every college and university in the country.

As for things being tougher for kids getting out of college today, I suppose that’s true in some ways, but in other ways it’s just bellyaching. The economy is cyclical. It sucks to graduate into a recession. I know, because I graduated in 1992 and jobs were few and far between at that time too. I did not, however, turn my nose up at temp jobs or meager salaries.

The economy will turn itself around, just as it did in 92. Wages will probably remain stagnant of course, but my theory is that’s got more to do with our consumer credit culture than with an inherent flaw of capitalism. We’ve enslaved ourselves to debt in this country. We borrow, we become dependent on that borrowed money, so we borrow more. It’s a vicious cycle. Credit is no different from a government subsidy like free healthcare or a cheap mortgage or student loans. You buy something you can’t otherwise afford with money that isn’t yours and the end result is that the cost of that good or service goes up for everyone. You, on the other hand, are never better off because just like the universities have no incentive to keep the cost of attending their schools competitive, employers have no incentive to pay their workers a better wage in order to keep them on because they know that even if Joe happens to need a new truck to get to work, he can just go out and get a car loan.

YOu know what? I agree. But it isn’t the dumbest generation b/c they were born that way. They are the dumbest generation b/c their parents made them that way. Those parents are BOOMERS. They are the dumbest generation to strike this nation and they are the generation that is going to be the undoing of this nation. I hate them collectively w/the white hot passion of a thousand suns! Individual boomers that I associate w/are fabulous. As a generation, I despise and spit on them. They suck!

JAM on April 9, 2009 at 9:35 PM
So true. It really will only get worse. Can you imagine them raising kids.

deidre on April 9, 2009 at 9:42 PM

Luckily, most of them despise “breeders,” and have no intention of having their lifestyle cramped by kids. If only the Republicans could figure out how to take advantage of the Latino inherent conservative culture, the left would self-determinately evolve out of existence.

It’s awful hard to believe in the capitalist system when it’s crashing down like a house of cards at the same time you’re trying to find work.

Dark-Star on April 9, 2009 at 6:21 PM

The only two sections of the economy that are in trouble, banking and insurance also happen to be the two most highly regulated sections of the economy. In banking you can’t sneeze without having a regulator check the color of the hanky first.

If you think that this is capitalism that is failing, you obviously have no idea what capitalism is.

“My guess: Doesn’t much matter. If the economy turns around, the stimulus will get credit and there’ll be Strange New Respect for command economies. If it doesn’t, Ayn Rand gets a whole new generation of fans. It’s out of our hands.”

Obama will be like Clinton. Right time, right place. The 1991-1992 recession was over by the time Clinton took office, yet he got all the credit. Obama stumbled and bumbled his way through the final few months of this recession and will take all the credit in 2010 when the economy is growing 3-4% a year.

And the dolt American voter will associate tax and spend with economic prosperity and vote in even more Dems in 2010. Only in 2011 or 2012 when inflation is running at 10% a year once the full effect of Obamanomics are felt, will Americans finally wake up.

The only two sections of the economy that are in trouble, banking and insurance also happen to be the two most highly regulated sections of the economy.

The Wells Fargo profit following Citibank is just the tip of the Iceberg. The surviving banks aren’t in trouble they’ve just stolen via their bought off Senators and Congressmen a trillion dollars at close to zero interest that they’re going to loan out over the next 4 or 5 years at a 500% or better profit.

Worse yet it continues the warped economy of GWB where the financial sector has swelled to over 20% of the GDP while real production has declined. This will only exacerbate the coming inflation, which, of course makes the banks even more money.

Well, oddly enough, military service is about my last chance. Not even the fast-food joints are hiring anymore. I was hoping to not have to sign up for a living hell and very likely being ordered to murder people, but I there just isn’t much else…

I remember. I do remember a home work assignment from my TEACHER in 1960. I was at that time 13. The teacher wanted to know how we as students viewed government.

I was presented a sheet about government. On the left was communism on the right natzism. I was asked to choose or explain my choice. Being poor i did my home work on the kitchen table. My mother saw the choices offered and asked WHY IS IT THAT WE MUST CHOOSE HOW A GROUP OF PEOPLE RULE OUR LIVES.

Viola offered a different sheet. She said that the u.s. is not on that chart!!!! Her chart said “total governmen or no government(anarchy).

iola said that the best government should teetter on anarchy. Let people lead thier own lives. Who going to choose hitler 6 million or stallon 25 million murders

Calling a highly regulated economy, endorsed by Republican politicians as well, free market and then forcing them to compete with slave labor here and abroad through illegal immigration nonenforcement and free trade, without properly explaining the causes will shift many people to socialism.

That’s really what it comes down to, I don’t see how we can compete on the global market like this. Enacting free trade while your country is not business friendly just loses you jobs and lowers your wage. Young adults were children when NAFTA was passed and then the subsequent deals afterward, they grew up on Free Trade and have seen their hometowns destroyed. While free trade might be great in free markets, we don’t have a free market.

I remember. I do remember a home work assignment from my TEACHER in 1960… On the left was communism on the right natzism. I was asked to choose or explain my choice.
TomLawler on April 10, 2009 at 12:10 PM

A lot of Americans are that stupid. The terms “right” and “left” used to refer to Socialism (government ownership of businesses) and Communism (government-enforced redistribution of wealth.) The Nazis were rabidly Socialist and the Maoists were the closest thing to real Communism anyone’s ever tried on a national scale. The Soviets mixed the systems together, and that’s what nearly all liberals believe in today.

Essentially, the two separate kinds of collectivism have merged into one. Collectivists eventually realized that if the government distributes all the property, then of course it’ll end up owning all the businesses. And if the government runs all the businesses, then it’s the employer of all citizens, so it’s also going to be apportioning all the wealth.

So your teacher was giving you a choice of which kind of poison you wanted – without explaining to you that they both have the same end result.